Hearing voices in the Christian tradition

Given the part that conversations with God, angelic messengers, and heavenly voices play in the Bible, it is hardly surprising that voices and visions play a significant part in subsequent Christian tradition. Whilst there are some significant accounts of voices in early Christianity, notably in the visions of some early martyrs and in the Life of Antony, there are many fewer exam-ples during the first millennium than in the second. From the 12th century onwards, accounts of voices and visions flourish.

The Life of Antony

Athanasius’ Life of Antony was probably written soon after the death of Antony of Egypt in 356.¹ Before the end of the 4th century, it had become a hugely popular Christian classic.

As a young man, having lost both his parents, Antony found himself responsible for the family home and his young sister. Reflecting on how the apostles had forsaken everything to follow Jesus, he went into church one day as a passage from Matthew’s gospel was being read:

If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.² It was as if by God’s design he held the saints in his recollection, and as if the passage were read on his account.

(Gregg, 1980, p.31, italics in original) He promptly gave the family land to the townspeople, sold all his posses-sions, and gave the rest of the money to the poor.³ Devoting himself to manual work and to prayer, and taking as his example a holy hermit from a local village, he grew in love and respect in the eyes of all. Eventually, he lived as a hermit in the Egyptian desert, pursuing a life of ascetical discipline and prayer. He attracted increasing numbers of followers and a reputation for great spiritual authority.

The Life of Antony became the first significant post-biblical biography of a Christian saint and set the tone for all subsequent hagiography. It presents Antony’s experiences in the desert after the model of the synoptic

gospel accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. However, the Life is marked by a much more colourful demonology than is found in the gos-pels. It is easy for the modern reader to misinterpret this. The narratives are psychologically sophisticated and any purely literal interpretation is in dan-ger of missing the subtle and complex ways in which they reveal Antony’s⁴ awareness of the challenging nature of the spiritual life.

Soon after Antony embarked on his life of prayer and self-discipline, Athanasius tells us:

The devil, who despises and envies good, could not bear seeing such purpose in a youth, but the sort of things he had busied himself in doing in the past, he set to work to do against this person as well.

(Gregg, 1980, p.33) Initially, demonic assaults on Antony are all related in purely cognitive terms. He is assailed by memories of a more comfortable life, concern for family obligations, and thoughts of the difficulties of his new life in the desert. Then follow “foul thoughts” and sexual dreams. Antony responds with prayerful resolve, turning his thoughts to Christ and to “the threat of the fire of judgement”. Eventually, when the devil is unable to defeat Antony by these means, he changes his strategy:

And as if succumbing, he no longer attacked by means of thoughts (for the crafty one had been cast out), but using now a human voice, said, “I tricked many, and I vanquished many, but just now, waging my attack on you and your labors, as I have upon many others, I was too weak.”⁵ Antony asks who has spoken, and the devil responds again: “I am the friend of fornication. I set its ambushes and I worked its seductions against the young – I have even been called the spirit of fornication.”⁶ Like Christ in the wilderness, Antony quotes scripture against the devil and he flees.

Thus ends Antony’s “first contest against the devil”.⁷ In his next encoun-ter, Antony is assailed by a multitude of demons who whip him, leaving him “as if dead”. In a third encounter, the demons make “such a crash-ing noise that that whole place seemed to be shaken by a quake”. They are then transformed into the appearance of “beasts and reptiles”.⁸ These beasts assault and wound Antony, so that he is in great pain, but “being in control of his thoughts” Antony responds by mocking the demons and reaffirming his faith. Eventually Antony has a vision of light, the demons vanish, and he is no longer in pain. When Antony asks why he was not thus rescued earlier,

a voice came to him: “I was here, Antony, but I waited to watch your struggle. And now, since you persevered and were not defeated, I will be your helper forever, and I will make you famous everywhere.”⁹

Antony goes on to endure more temptations, which take both visual and auditory (verbal and non-verbal) forms, and he is supported by “visions from above” (p.40). As a result of his experiences he is able to teach others how to combat temptation. Whilst Antony was not averse to answering back when he heard the voice of the devil, his later instruction suggests also a technique of not paying attention to the voices and visions:

Therefore let us not pay attention to what [the devil] might say – for he lies – nor let us be frightened by his apparitions, which themselves are also deceptions. What appears in them is not true light . . . They do, without doubt, appear, but they disappear again at once, harming none of the faithful, but carrying with themselves the likeness of the fire that is about to receive them. So here it is not necessary to fear them, for by the grace of Christ all their pursuits come to nothing.¹⁰

He goes on to indicate that the devils are treacherous and multiform. They do not always become visible. They sing sacred songs and recite scripture.

They repeat a text that is being read “as if in echo”.¹¹ They simulate proph-esy¹² and take on the appearance of light.¹³ He encounters one demon who calls himself “the Power of God”¹⁴ and another who identifies himself as Satan.¹⁵ He generally responds to the demonic voices and visions with prayer, chanting of Psalms, and invocations of the name of Christ.

Antony also hears a divine voice. In addition to the voice that prom-ised to make him famous, he hears a voice “from above” telling him where he may better seek solitude.¹⁶ On another occasion, a voice from above accompanies a vision of souls passing to heaven (and of other souls being prevented from doing so) after their death.¹⁷

Antony was not the only desert father to hear voices.¹⁸ Thus, for exam-ple, in the Apophthegmata, Abba Arsenius tells a story of a hermit sitting in his cell who heard a voice that said “Come here, and I will show you the works of the children of men.”¹⁹ The voice shows the hermit various men, working in different ways, and then interprets their actions as a kind of par-able. Abba Macarius, like Antony, has conversations with the devil,²⁰ and Abba Piterion hears the voice of an angel.²¹ On the other hand, Evagrius and Cassian both emphasised the importance of imageless or pure prayer, beyond words.²² Alongside the tradition of voices, there is thus also a tradi-tion within which hearing the voice of God represents something less than the height of spiritual experience.²³

The Life of Antony gives an account of a life lived in imitation of Christ, of the overcoming of temptation, of Christian holiness, self-disci-pline, and prayer. Antony condems the Arian heresy and supports doctrine affirmed at the First Council of Nicaea (325 ce). The Life was clearly not provided as an account of voice hearing and – even if it had been – it was written according to pre-scientific norms and expectations. However, given

its seminal influence upon subsequent Christian hagiography and spiritual-ity, the fact that it accords a significant place to Antony’s ability to hear demonic and divine voices is significant.

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo²⁴ (354–430 ce) was born to a pagan father and a Christian mother. Raised initially as a Christian, he took a mistress at the age of 17 and became a Manichaean. Increasingly dissatisfied with Manichaeism, he grew in admiration for the sermons of Bishop Ambrose.

He also read the Life of Antony.

In 386, events came to a crisis in a garden in Milan. Hearing the voice of a child in a neighbouring house chanting a refrain “Take it and read, take it and read”, he remembered how Antony had happened to go into a church when the gospel was being read and had taken the words of Matthew 19:21 as being addressed by God to him. Accordingly, he took the words of the child as a divine command, addressed to him, to open the Christian scrip-tures and read the first passage on which his eyes should fall. When he did this, the passage that he read was from St Paul’s Letter to the Romans:

“Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quar-rels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature’s appetites.”²⁵ The impact of this experience on Augustine was immense: “it was as though the light of confi-dence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled.”²⁶ Augustine went on to become Bishop of Hippo and one of the most signifi-cant theologians of the Christian Church.

Augustine’s mystical experiences are a subject of some interest.²⁷ In Confessions he records his discovery of a transcendent order hidden in God:

“And so, in an instant of awe, my mind attained to the sight of the God who IS. Then, at last, I caught sight of your invisible nature, as it is known through your creatures.”²⁸ In another experience, shared with his mother Monica just before she died, he records:

And while we spoke of the eternal Wisdom, longing for it and strain-ing for it with all the strength of our hearts, for one fleetstrain-ing instant we reached out and touched it. Then with a sigh, leaving our spiritual har-vest bound to it, we returned to the sound of our own speech, in which each word has a beginning and an ending – far, far different from your Word, our Lord, who abides in himself for ever, yet never grows old and gives new life to all things.²⁹

Augustine’s mystical experiences do not include the hearing of voices.³⁰ However, Augustine and Antony (as portrayed by Athanasius) shared a sense that God addresses the human soul through the voice of scripture.

Augustine also understood the voice of the child who chanted “take it and read” as conveying a divine command. Simple though these observations are, they are enormously important. If God can speak to human beings through the reading of scripture, or through the voice of a child in a neigh-bouring garden, then why not also through a voice heard in the absence of any visible speaker?

In The Literal Meaning of Genesis³¹ Augustine distinguishes between corporeal visions, spiritual visions, and intellectual visions.³² Corporeal visions are perceived through the body, spiritual (or imaginative) visions are perceived through the mind, and intellectual visions (understood by Augustine as being the highest form) are perceived by the intellect, without images. Applied initially to visions, this taxonomy can equally be applied to voices and to other perceptual phenomena. It had enduring influence, being adopted by Thomas Aquinas,³³ Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and many other later theologians and spiritual writers.

Early medieval voices

It is difficult to find clear Christian examples of the hearing of voices between the 5th and 10th centuries ce, and during this period McGinn³⁴ notes also the relative lack of significant mystical authors.

Where visionary experiences were reported during the early Middle Ages, they appear to have taken a particular form, usually a once-in-a-lifetime experience effecting a personal conversion of some kind.³⁵ St Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) describes simply (and yet in great depth) an experience of light unaccompanied by any voice:

One day, as he stood repeating more in his intellect than with his mouth the words, “God, have mercy upon me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13), suddenly a pro-fuse flood of divine light appeared above him and filled the whole room. As this happened the young man lost his bearings, forgetting whether he was in a house or under a roof; for he saw nothing but light around him and did not even know that he stood upon the earth. He had no fear of falling, or awareness of the world, nor did any of those things that beset men and bodily beings enter his mind. Instead he was wholly united to non-material light, so much so that it seemed to him that he himself had been trans-formed into light. Oblivious of all else, he was filled with tears and with inexpressible joy and gladness. Then his intellect ascended to heaven and beheld another light, more lucid than the first. Miraculously there appeared to him, standing close to that light, the holy, angelic elder of whom we have spoken and who had given him the short rule and the book.

(Palmer et al., 1995, p.18) Symeon had many more such visions before eventually he heard the voice of Jesus. This voice was a significant turning point for him,³⁶ but his theology is still dominated by visual imagery.

High medieval voices

From the 12th century onwards, visionary experiences of a different kind begin to emerge, exemplified in such figures as Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and Elisabeth of Schönau (1129–1165), and a “new mys-ticism” emerges. This is characterised by a shift of focus away from cloistered religious communities, a much more prominent role being taken by women, and a sudden flourishing of biographical and autobiographical accounts of mystical experience. At the forefront of this new mysticism were figures such as Mary of Oignies (1177–1213) and Frances of Assisi (c.1181–1226).³⁷ Within the visionary experiences reported by mystics of this period, voices play a significant and varied part, but the visual element almost always predominates.

In Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias, the visions are complex and extended. The texts that Hildegard left were accompanied by miniature paintings, thought to have been produced under her supervision and, in the case of the last vision, by music composed by Hildegard herself. In these visions, voices play a small part. However, they are preceded in the manuscript by an account of hearing a voice:

And behold! In the forty-third year of my earthly course, as I was gaz-ing with great fear and tremblgaz-ing attention at a heavenly vision, I saw a great splendour in which resounded a voice from Heaven, saying to me,

“O fragile human, ashes of ashes, and filth of filth! Say and write what you see and hear.”

(Hart et al., 1990, p.59) The voice continues to emphasise that Hildegard should write down her visions, and yet she does not do so for some time, until encouraged by others to do so. Thus the voice supports the authority of the visions and excuses any apparent lack of humility in sharing them with others.

Elisabeth of Schönau provides an example of the variety of forms that voices might take within a vision.³⁸ Elisabeth’s visions began when she was 23 years old, and were recorded by her brother Ekbert. They soon assumed a strongly liturgical pattern within which she typically expe-rienced visions corresponding with saints, feasts, and festivals of the liturgical year. Contrary to this later pattern, her initial visions in May 1152 – in the context of low mood and suicidal ideation – were of a

“phantom in a monks cowl” which she heard laughing, threatening her, and swearing.³⁹ On 31 May 1152 she had a vision of the Virgin Mary, in which she reports that Mary:

implanted – I don’t know how – these words in my mind, “Do not fear, because these things will not harm you at all.” In truth I did not hear the sound of her voice; rather I only clearly saw the movement of her lips.

(Clark and Newman, 2000, p.47)

On 7 June 1152, in a vision which she re-experienced every Saturday on Marian festivals, she reports that, “Looking at [Mary], I carefully watched the movement of her lips, and I understood that she was calling me by my name, Elisabeth, and then she said no more.”⁴⁰ On other occasions, she seems more straightforwardly to “hear” the voice of the visionary figure, as on 14 August 1152: “at noon, my heart was struck by a sudden shock and I heard these words, ‘Do not be afraid, daughter, because the Lord your comforter chastises every child He takes to Himself.’”⁴¹ On 15 March 1153, in another vision, she poses a question to St Gregory and receives what appears to have been an audible reply.⁴² At yet other times, the distinction between words that she has heard and spoken in her prayers is blurred. For example, on 14 August 1153 she reports that she “unexpectedly turned over these words in my mouth” and “this suddenly rushed into my mouth”.⁴³

Hadewijch (mid-13th century) provides a further example of complex visionary experience, within which voices play a part. Her vision of “The Perfect Bride”, experienced on the festival of the Epiphany during celebra-tion of the Mass, involves a vision of a large city, in the midst of which a figure is seated upon a round disk:

And he who sat there above the disk was sitting in constant stillness;

but in the disk his Being circled about in unspeakable swiftness without stopping. And the abyss in which the disk ran as it circled about was of such unheard-of depth and so dark that no horror can be compared to it.

(Hart and Mommaers, 1980, p.293) After further description of the disc and the figure, Hadewijch falls down in adoration. Four eagles then appear in turn, each crying out with words which Hadewijch records.

At that moment I was taken up, through the voice of [the fourth] eagle who spoke to me. And then there came into the city a great crowd in fes-tive apparel, and each one rich in her own works. They were all virtues;

and they were conducting a bride to her Beloved. They had served her nobly and had looked after her so proudly that they could present her as worthy to be received by the mighty great God as his bride.⁴⁴

There then follows a description of each of 12 virtues that comprise the bridal robe, and the bride is led into the city. At the end, Hadewijch comes to see herself as the bride and is “received in union by the One who sat there in the abyss upon the circling disk, and there I became one with him in the certainty of unity”.⁴⁵ Finally, after further words spoken by the eagle,

There then follows a description of each of 12 virtues that comprise the bridal robe, and the bride is led into the city. At the end, Hadewijch comes to see herself as the bride and is “received in union by the One who sat there in the abyss upon the circling disk, and there I became one with him in the certainty of unity”.⁴⁵ Finally, after further words spoken by the eagle,